


Perspective

by PurpleArrowzandLeather



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Season 8, coma revelations
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-11
Updated: 2019-08-11
Packaged: 2020-08-18 22:24:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,906
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20199136
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PurpleArrowzandLeather/pseuds/PurpleArrowzandLeather
Summary: When Castiel is in the mental hospital, Sam and Dean take time when they can to visit him. They don't know that he can hear them, but maybe that's what makes the things they say that much more important.





	Perspective

**Author's Note:**

> I've been sucked into the SPN wormhole and I can't stop writing little shorts now. Thanks, binge-watching. :)

Dean has never felt slimier than the moment they checked Cas into the psych ward. Leaving him behind feels wrong in a whole host of ways, some of which he’s pretty certain he doesn’t understand yet. 

“We don’t have any other choice, Dean.” 

He scowls at his little brother. “Don’t give me that crap, Sam. There is always a choice. I've told you that. I’ve told Cas that, recently no less.” 

“You know we can’t protect him.” 

“Who cares?” 

Sam throws him an exasperated look. “You do. You’re just frustrated that you can’t help him with what’s going on in his head.” 

“Dude, the guy is in an angel coma. If Meg weren’t pretending to give him an IV every day, that might be just a little bit of a problem. He doesn’t need to eat, and he’s going to spend the next however long as Dr. Fries’ wife.” 

“Are you saying... you’re actually grateful for Meg?” 

“I’m saying the inside man is what we’re going to need if no one is going to get suspicious, and that man can’t be us.” 

Sam nods, sliding into the car. “Okay, so... what do we do?” 

“We work.” 

So, on Dean’s vague sense of direction now that he’s been spun in a circle again, they work. Hunting becomes matter #2, over sleeping but right behind drinking. Of course, it’s only been three days. 

Day four is spent driving for no apparent reason. Sam only realizes why when they’re rolling back into Indiana. The notion brings a smile to his face. 

“Meg call?” 

“Nope. We need a reason to go see our friend?” 

Sam shakes his head. “Nope.” 

They pull in around four in the morning, but asking for Meg gets them in despite the hour. She leaves them to their own devices, not exactly keen to stick around with two humans who don’t really like her. 

They pull up a couple of chairs, sitting on either side of Cas. 

Sam pats his hand. “Heya, Cas. I... don’t know if you can tell we’re here or not, but we came to say hi. Let you know how things were going.” 

As expected, Cas doesn’t move. Dean sits silently, but Sam could almost swear his presence is overwhelming. Come to think of it, maybe he’s always been like that. Sam has almost always been comforted by his big brother even just being there. 

Cas is their brother too, no matter what happened and whether Dean wants to admit it or not. Maybe Cas gets the same comfort, so the idea puts Sam at ease. 

“Dean’s right here with me. He’s... you know, kinda looming, but he’s on your other side.” 

Dean huffs to himself, angling his chair and putting his feet up along the side of the bed. “Yeah, whatever. Don’t listen to him, Cas. He just likes to say that I brood.” 

“Man, you do brood. Like all the time.” 

“Shut up.” 

Sam drops it, leaving Dean with a satisfied smirk on his face. Sure, he still pulls out Bobby’s old flask and drinks a little, but nothing heavy like in the past few days. 

Sam talks quietly, pulling his chair closer just like Dean had. He, unlike his brother, is a civilized person, which means he takes his boots off before putting his feet on the bed. 

They talk well into the morning, periods of comfortable and companionable silence falling in the time between stories. Dean watches over Sam when he falls asleep in his chair, smiling as Sam instinctively leans closer to Cas. 

Contrary to what Cas may or may not be thinking in his head, Dean doesn’t care anymore about what happened. Bobby is gone, and just what he needs is to lose someone else. 

Sam makes a noise in his sleep, his shoulders shifting. Dean pulls his feet down, taking his shoes off. They’ll be here awhile. Sam doesn’t often get a chance to sleep peacefully, so it’s only fair that they stay. 

Besides, their brother in arms needs them too. 

He’d be a liar if he said that he wasn’t humming “Hey, Jude” while paging through a magazine. It should remind him of everything he’s lost, and maybe it does for a minute, but it also reminds him what he’s hanging onto. Cas is their family, if not the only real friend they’ve got left. Sam is okay for the time being. Meg... well, she’s sort of joined ranks with them now. 

The stupid thing is, Dean thinks he might be going soft on her. She got a real job to take care of Castiel, and she really didn’t have to. That gains her some points in his book, but he still can’t shake the whole ‘Sorry I tried to kill you. A lot.’ thing. 

Even after they leave the ward again for a new gig, Dean feels lighter. Yeah, yeah, touchy-feely garbage isn’t really his style, but it’s the truth. 

Sam can’t figure out why he has a tune stuck in his head throughout the whole case, and all Dean offers him as an answer is a soft chuckle. Sam doesn’t get it and Dean doesn’t feel awfully inclined to tell him. 

Even finding out that Bobby ducked his reaper to stay with them can’t make its way past his newfound optimism. They’re looking for Roman, and it’s taking some time, but they’ll find him. 

Sam is the one driving after their most recent hunt and he can’t help turning the wheels towards Indiana. It feels right to do it. Every four or five days, they’ll manage a visit. The whole thing is a waiting game, but they’re patient with the downed angel. 

Meg would deny it until her dying breath that walking in on the boys sleeping in their chairs makes her all gooey inside. She hates that she’s standing on the edge of belonging. Both boys are making an effort to treat her with respect, which is a little bit confusing. The whole sleeping with the enemy thing would make her a bit nervous, too. If she ever got nervous, that is.

Or maybe she just won’t admit feeling solidarity to herself, but it feels good. 

Maybe_ that’s _why angels, demons and monsters hate the Winchesters so much. They draw you in, whether you know it or not, and suddenly you find yourself loyal. All the righteous fury in the world can’t stop them, and she thinks everyone knows it. 

She knows it. 

Hell, Crowly knows it and she’s not quite sure that he won’t get sucked into the Winchester Vortex of Love._ Patent it, boys. Make a mint. _

What she really doesn’t understand about them is the fact that the world works so hard to take everything from them, but they keep fighting for it anyway. There are three sides: family, people who hate you, and people who don’t know you exist. People who are on the fence quickly find themselves pulled or kicked to one side or the other.

Sitting at the foot of Cas’s bed with her earbuds in as she watches them all sleep, she’s starting to realize that her allegiances have shifted. 

Meg grumbles. “You two just had to throw the Mentos and Coke together, didn’t you?” 

Sam’s brow furrows and he cracks an eye open. “Meg?” 

“What? I’m not allowed to sit around and daydream about flaying livers? What has this country come to, Sam?” 

He smirks, a knowing look in his eye. “Mmhmm.” 

“Shut up, Jolly Green.” 

Sam’s eye closes and she waits until his breaths become even to take a one herself. _Damn it. I’m getting attached. Why is it that I can’t seem to stop myself? _

Meanwhile, their resident sleeper simulant lays as still as ever. They don’t know that even talking to him aloud pulls his mind away from the pain. Sam’s visions are long gone in his mind, and it’s a little too quiet when Sam and Dean aren’t there to pull his attention away from the silence. 

The sleep like a doze that he can’t wake up from. Everything is right there, but he can’t reach far enough to touch it. 

He could almost swear he’s heard Bobby talking to him even though the boys told him that the old man was dead. They didn’t mention a haunting in the first few weeks, but Castiel is quite sure that he’s there. Now, anyway. 

He likes to put a hand on his shoulder and tell him to hold on. To encourage him. Bobby may be dead, but he’s not about to give up on one of his boys. Yes, the betrayal hurt, but there’s nothing they can do about it now. Bellyaching over it won’t help anything, so all he has left to do is help put their angel back together. 

Castiel is a patient being, one who has been alive for a long time. The time between their visits should be almost nothing to him, but it’s the opposite. Stuck in his head as he is most times, being pulled back to the conscious world by their voices is a relief. 

Time is fluid. He told Dean that once. To a being like him, it may as well have been yesterday. Except... there are far too many good days and bad days in between to condense it all. Time is fluid, he had said. 

It sure doesn’t feel that way now. 

Even listening to Meg has its high points. He can always tell when she’s sitting with him by herself. Her comments are generally scathing, but he detects fondness underneath the barbs. When she doesn’t talk – which is the majority of the time – she listens to music that Castiel can just barely make out. 

Earth’s devices certainly are strange. 

Most times, the boys visit him together, but there is the odd occasion that Dean will sit in the room with him on his own. Sam will do the same, and then they'll all get together for food.

He says things that Cas wishes he could believe. It wasn’t his fault. He did the best he could. He had too much on his shoulders. They’re all excuses that Cas has tried to make himself, but he can argue with every single one. 

Castiel doesn’t understand it. Yeah, sure, he helped them in the end, but what does that change? What he became was so... _wrong _that it twists at him to even be alive. 

Dean, Sam and Bobby don’t seem to care. Meg is proud or him for leashing Crowly for a hot minute (her words, not his), which is likely a bad thing. 

It doesn’t make sense. Letting all of it go doesn’t make sense until- 

“You’re our family.” 

No argument Castiel could ever make seems to be able to stand up to those words. He’s tried, but everything in him says that those boys don’t care about what he’s done. Sam and Dean _do not_ care. Castiel can fight it all he likes, but those words.... They’re the only truth the Winchesters know or care about. 

“You’re our family.” 

If those words didn’t make him feel so awful about the lies and betrayal, he might even allow himself to believe them. It can’t change his guilt, but it reminds him that he has somewhere to go. If and when he wakes up, he’ll still have a home. 

Castiel won’t be alone, and maybe that’s all that truly matters. 


End file.
